Pharmakon Unleashes Single 'Self-Regulating System' + Announces New Album

NYC industrial noise figurehead Pharmakon aka Margaret Chardiet has returned with 'Self-Regulating System' the intense first offering from her just-announced fourth studio album Devour. The new single obliterates listeners' senses with a post-industrial soundscape of head-hammering mechanical rhythms, dead-eyed drones and unhinged vocal yowls, delivering deliriously bleak listening for Aotearoa's ice cold winter months. The five track long player is dropping in late August via sonically adventurous Brooklyn imprint Sacred Bones, and was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) over one continuous take in the studio. Pharmakon shared a statement expanding on ideas orbiting the concept of "self-cannibalization" driving her latest collection...

“'Devour' uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression.Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at “balancing feedback”, within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual, but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them - to keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines, bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any means necessary, but respite is always brief- nothing can dampen the glare from behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. “ABOUT THE SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY”... To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making."

'Devour' is out on Friday 30th August via Sacred Bones Records.